<nettime> for Leni Riefenstahl

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

-


dark virtue, dark sublime (for leni reifenstahl)


i

i dream of the woman's voice, hundreds of kilometers away in the night-
time wind and rain, coming closer, almost broken up, received on a boat 
on a stormy sea, fading in and out, the man from maine at the controls,
her presence most real, we discuss the flatness of the world wide web

ii

the infinite depths of radio in the dark night, and the flatness-now of
the computer screen, rubbed raw against our skin, as if this were all the
world that is, this narcissism, decoy of the infinite :you listened to a
woman, north north cape breton, on the short-wave, her voice coming
through the air, radio in the pulsing air, flooding our bodies, her voice
faint, you replied, i can hear you, i can hear you :in the dream, in the
pulsing air, in the dream, in the pulsing air, between cape breton and the
rest of the world, in the fog and thin dark rain, we were on the boat, you
were a man i knew in maine ::and more distance and radio and distance

come with me, the infinite depths of radio in the dark night, and the
flatness-now of the computer screen, rubbed raw against our skin, as if
this were all the world that is, this narcissism, decoy of the infinite ,
this world disappearance into mist, this irretrievable

iii

radio was the voice pining in the radiating distance through the storm;
internet is the cleansed interior positioning the body : radio was the
truth, internet the corporate; radio was the labor of the world, internet
effortless :radio makes distance that internet takes away; radio is
irretrievable distance, the reflection of the universe among the universe;
screen is cauterization, the imminent promise and premise of goods; radio
is you, is audio, through you and within you; internet promises you and
surplus you as a given, as an object, as a goods::

collapses the radio beauty, cleansed fragmentation and propriety protocol
of the net, my pocket panoramas

iv

as a child, short-wave brought me the world and withdrew the world; i
heard the lightning before the thunder, knew of the weathering sun; in
this dream, i'm returned through the maternal to the infinite, given the
language of the air; through this dream, the trans-national disappears -
the equipment was so old! and working and bringing down the voice from
everywhere; in the dream, the voice and wind and rain, the vacuum-tube of
the radio, interior hearths; in the dream the dissolutions of narcissisms;
in the dream, atmospherics

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